Hippo's — Local services in Town of Guilderland

For our new home, we wanted to set up a top-flight Media Room in our basement and place a Frame TV on the wall above the fireplace in the Family Room. While we could have resorted to conducting our research and purchasing equipment piecemeal, there is much to be said of a “Professional’s Hand”!

After shopping for other vendors, we settled on Hippo’s for a number of reasons. Their Albany showroom is clean, well-organized, and staffed with some truly amazing folks. The owner, Tony H. and consultants Josh and Erik, are fantastic in their own right. For our project, we worked closely with Josh who really showcased his passion and knowledge of Theater and Media Room Design, A/V equipment, and Smart Homes. Suffice to say, after our first meeting at Hippo’s, we knew that we were working with the right company. We also appreciated Josh for educating us on technical terminologies, design ideas, and budgeting for this project. There was no typical salesman stuff going on – no shoving expensive equipment our way and no over-promising. He was always available for questions, even after-hours. And, rather than make a quick sale, he treated our encounter as a long-term relationship where we will continue to call up Hippo’s for future projects.

The ”Professional’s Hand” is symbolic of professionals who knows how to design acoustical spaces, understands the A/V technology that fits within both spaces and budgets, and executes delivery beyond expectations. No amount of YouTube videos or “professional amateurs” can substitute for the “Professional’s Hand”. At Hippo’s, the professionalism, the passion for designing and building out a dream audiovisual space, and the execution of the equipment setup has truly exceeded our expectations.

We now have a fully-blown Dolby 5.1.2 Media Room where we can watch sports during the daytime and movies at night. And I mean literally, MOVIES! The experience is so stellar that we should charge people to watch because it feels like you’re in a state-of-the art theater. The space is clean with high-end speakers hidden in the walls. Room lighting arrangement, home networking equipment for fast and direct Ethernet, even a universal remote that controls everything from Apple TV to the PS5 was selected and installed to perfection. Our installer, Mike, and his team did an amazing job of fulfilling Josh’s design. Let me add another useful nugget: We trusted Josh on incorporating Dolby Atmos. Before this install, we never heard Atmos. Now that we have it, we wish we had more space to add more Atmos speakers.

In addition to the media room, Hippo’s also installed our Samsung Frame TV over our fireplace. We were apprehensive because typically TVs over the fireplace are associated with neck issues from tilting heads backward. Well, after examining the space, Mike determined the optimal installation height distance from the fireplace that allows for comfortable viewing without the need of a separate TV mount. The Family Room setup was another example proving that professionals who have been doing this work for a long time is the way to building out an ideal audiovisual setup.

In Summary, I highly recommend Hippo’s to anyone even remotely thinking of a theater/media room or a smart house project. Their prices are fair. Their professionalism is laudable. And they execute to perfection. Finding small businesses like this nowadays is a godsend. Looking forward to working with them in the...

I've spent thousands of dollars at Hippo's, which is easy to do. Hippo's carries some very high end gear, some of which is worth an investment, but much of which is "audiophile" snake oil. Depending on who you work with and your apparent level of knowledge, be prepared for some ridiculous up-selling sales tactics. If you don't know much about your existing gear, they might just ask what you paid for it and then use price as a metric of quality, because they don't know enough to make a genuine assessment. Keep in mind that this is the behavior of a pure salesperson, not a physicist, not an expert in digital signal processing, and likely not someone you want to work with. If you need to shop at Hippo's (they are the only dealer in the area for many brands) and you get this runaround, my advice would be to do your research elsewhere and go in knowing exactly what you want. Avoid the consultation, get your transaction over with, and get out of there with your...

Fantastic store that carries top of the line gear. Stores like this do not exist very often nowadays because too many consumers cannot differentiate between products, they only know cheap. What is excellent about this store is that they have the best of the best for lower budgets also and will listen to what your needs are. That is not the reason I first came here, it was my knowledge of the quality products they carry. Try them out for yourself, they've always been approachable, they listen, and they don't push things, they are genuinely nice people who will advise you of the pro's and cons. I am sure that I will be looking here again soon when it comes time for new gear, places like this are hard to find and make a quality first guy like...